The present invention relates to management of radiation doses and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for managing radiation doses which extract image information about a captured image acquired by a radiographic apparatus, information about a patient to be examined, and examination information, calculate an Effective Dose (ED) based on the extracted information, and manage a radiation exposure dose for each patient. The present invention is also related to a recording medium which is used to implement the same.
In general, in order to perform radiation treatment in a hospital, many systems or apparatuses may be used. These systems and apparatuses include an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system, an Order Communication System (OCS), a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS), a Radiation Treatment Planning (RTP) system, and radiation treatment equipment (e.g., a Linear Accelerator (LINAC)).
An OCS is a system that includes a database for storing various types of medical information and the examination data of patients and transfers prescriptions, which were issued by doctors after examining the patients, to individual corresponding treatment departments over a communication network.
An EMR system is a system that is configured to store and search electronic medical records.
A PACS is a system that can store images, captured by at least one medical imaging system, such as Computed Tomography (CT) equipment, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) equipment, Positron Emission Tomography (PET) equipment, a CT Simulator, or Computed Radiography (CR) equipment, in computer file form and transfer the images. The PACS has been adopted by most of middle or higher class hospitals.
An RTP system is a system that uses a program to formulate plans for radiation treatment for patients. An RTP system formulates radiation treatment plans, that is, prepares radiation treatment plan information, and performs the calculation and examination of radiation doses.
Radiation treatment equipment is an apparatus that actually performs radiation treatment on patients in accordance with radiation treatment plans that were made by the RTP system.
When radiation treatment is applied to a patient using the above-described apparatuses, a radiation dose to which the patient is exposed (Effective Dose (ED)) may be an important variable. In other words, in radiation therapy, it is necessary to receive feedback about the radiation dose to which a patient was exposed, to calculate an allowable radiation dose for the patient in subsequent radiation treatments, and to enable an RTP system to formulate a radiation treatment plan for the patient based on the calculated radiation dose.
However, the radiation treatment equipment is not provided with a device for calculating radiation doses for patients, and therefore there is no provision for a method of estimating the allowable radiation doses for patients receiving radiation treatments.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system that is capable of, when administering radiation treatment, calculating an ED for each patient and managing ED data in an integrated fashion.